Parenting stress refers to parents perceived pressure in the parent-child system, that is, the accompanying feelings of difficulties, tension, and anxiety when parents perform their parental roles and tasks, which are affected by their own personality, child temperament, poor parent-child interaction, and other social factors. Depressive mood refers to the negative reactions that individuals make when they encounter some disturbing or unpleasant events in daily life. It is a negative emotional state caused by the frustrations and difficulties when individual encountering negative situations. The parent-child relationship is the core content of the parenting process. The quality of early parent-child relationship has an important impact on children's social and behavioral development. Children with close parent-child relationship have better social development and fewer problem behaviors, while children with conflict parent-child relationships tend to be hindered in social development and show more problem behaviors. Children’s problem behaviors and parents’ emotion can influence parent-child relationship, which would further influence parenting stress.Objective:This study aimed to examine the influence of preschoolers' anger-aggression and maternal depression on mothers' parenting stress, as well as the mediating effect of parent-child relationship quality.Method: The participants include 478 preschoolers aged from 2 to 6 years old from the first-tier cities of China, of which 46% were girls. The preschoolers’ mother answered the questionnaires measuring children’s anger-aggression, maternal depression and parent-child relationship.Results:First, there was no significant gender difference on parent-child relationship and maternal depression; boys’ anger-aggression was significantly higher than girls’ anger-aggression.Second, children’s anger-aggression and maternal depression were significantly correlated with parenting stress; parent-child relationship was significantly correlated with both maternal depression and parenting stress.Third, parent-child conflict fully mediated the association between maternal depression and parenting stress, as well as the association between anger-aggression and parenting stress; parent-child closeness partly mediated the association between maternal depression and parenting stress, as well as the association between anger-aggression and parenting stress.Fourth, there was a significant chained effect from children’s anger-aggression to parenting stress mediated by maternal depression and parent-child relationship.Conclusion: Children’s anger-aggression and maternal depression are associated with mother’s parenting stress, these associations are mediated by parent-child relationship.
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